The Syntax Of Descriptive Adjective Adverbials Oriented To Arguments

This thesis concerns on the syntax and semantic orientation of descriptive adjective adverbials in clauses which contain descriptive adjective adverbials oriented to arguments. We believe that descriptive adjective adverbials is a kind of secondary predicate in Chinese. Descriptive adjective adverbial and their PRO form a secondary predication phrase, the head of the phrase (projection) is a null functional category. That descriptive adjective adverbials point to arguments on semantic is achieved indirectly by pointing to their PRO. In clauses which contain descriptive adjective adverbials oriented to object, the PRO of secondary predicate (descriptive adjective adverbials) is controlled by object. In clauses which contain descriptive adjective adverbials oriented to subject, the PRO of secondary predicate is controlled by subject. The descriptive adjective adverbials oriented to subject are depictive secondary predicates. The descriptive adjective adverbials oriented to object are depictive secondary predicates or resultative predicates. The descriptive adjective adverbials oriented to subject are generated on the position of adverbial originally. The descriptive adjective adverbials oriented to object are more complicated, the resultatives one lies in the position of complement originally, but raised to adverbial's position with the whole secondary predication projection because of prosody; the depictives one lies in the front of verbs originally, but move to the back of verbs with the raise of verbs because of prosody.This analysis can avoid the disadvantages of former papers, can explain the odd semantic orientation and the differences between descriptive adjective adverbials and normal adverbials easily. This analysis can also explain why argument-oriented adverbials in these clauses must be descriptive adjectives(show a selectivity on category), and not all descriptive adjectives can be(show a selectivity on semantic).We also point out, there is no transformation between the clauses which contain descriptive adjective adverbials oriented to object and the clauses which contain the same descriptive adjective adverbials acted as attributives. Descriptive adjective adverbials in the latters are not transform from secondary predication. They are generated as attributives basically. Besides, we describe and discuss the semantic orientation of descriptive adjective adverbials and the pragmatic aspects(subjectivity, etc). We point out that the so-called multi-semantic orientation is not true, and subjectivity is purely a pragmatic phenomenon but not related to syntax of the constructions per se.